The present invention relates to a submunition fuse with a nondelay self-destruct firing device.
As is known, use has been made for many years of artillery projectiles and rockets containing a number of submunitions or bombs, and a time fuse which, when activated at a given height over the target, bursts the so-called carrier or cargo projectile or rocket to fire the bombs over a given surface area.
The submunitions feature respective fuses by which they are exploded on impact at the end of their fall.
At present, the most commonly used fuses operate solely on impact, and present the drawback of possibly misfiring on impact with soft ground and/or at a small angle of descent, thus resulting in submunitions with "armed" fuses, i.e. with an aligned explosive train, and which may still explode, being left lying on the ground.
To overcome the above drawback, fuses have been devised which, in addition to the primary impact operating mode, also present a secondary self-destruct mode. In this case, when the fuse is armed or the carrier burst, a time mechanism is activated to ensure operation of the fuse in the event it misfires on impact; and, as the submunition, for it to be effective, must of course explode after reaching the target, a lapse of several seconds must be allowed between activation and operation of the self-destruct mechanism.
As of yet, two types of self-destruct mechanisms--delayed-explosion and electronic-delay--have been used or proposed, neither of which, however, has proved altogether satisfactory. The delayed-explosion type, in fact, presents the disadvantage of being sensitive to ageing and storage conditions; while the electronic-delay type features electronic components, is also affected by prolonged storage and storage conditions if battery powered, and is of complex, high-cost design if powered by electromagnetic generators exploiting relative rotation of the firing pin and fuse.